The world revels in the pomp and spectacle of the papacy, but it’s rare that the soul of the vicar of Christ is laid bare, revealing something of the mystery of the Petrine office and the successor of St. Peter’s close personal bond with God.

Pope Benedict’s last Wednesday audience on Feb. 27 was such a moment. His personal testimony offered us a glimpse into the conscience of a pope, a man who served and revered his predecessor, Blessed John Paul II, before his own election in 2005.

Benedict offered his reflections to an estimated crowd of 200,000 people, who feared they might never see him again, even as he promised to “gather up the whole Church in prayer.”

“When, on April 19, nearly eight years ago, I accepted to assume the Petrine ministry, I had the firm certainty that has always accompanied me. In that moment the words that resounded in my heart were: ‘Lord, what are you asking of me? This is a great burden that you place on my shoulders, but if you ask it of me, on your word, I will throw out the nets, sure that you will guide me,’” Pope Benedict told the crowd, gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his final catechesis.

“And the Lord has truly guided me; he has been close to me. I have been able to perceive his presence daily. It has been a piece of the path of the Church that has had moments of joy and light, but also moments that were not easy,” he said.

No, not easy. “The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the ‘rock’ of his Church. He gave him the keys of his Church and instituted him shepherd of the whole flock,” states the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “The Pope, bishop of Rome and Peter’s successor, is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful" (881-882).

While it is not possible to fully understand what it means to be the ‘rock’ of the Church, Benedict sought to put it in human terms: “He, who assumes the Petrine ministry … belongs always and totally to everyone, to the whole Church. His life is, so to speak, totally deprived of the private sphere. I have felt, and I feel even in this very moment, that one receives one’s life precisely when he offers it as a gift.”

In 2005, when then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delivered the homily for the funeral Mass of Pope John Paul II, his reflections acknowledged the joyful, unique and, at times, harrowing responsibilities of the Petrine office.

Cardinal Ratzinger remarked that when John Paul was still a relatively young priest and was appointed a bishop, he had to give up his fruitful pastoral and intellectual work, a demand that “must have seemed to him like losing his very self, losing what had become the very human identity of this young priest.” But in dialogue with God, he accepted the sacrifice and later discovered that his work continued to bear fruit in new and unexpected ways, noted Cardinal Ratzinger. He saw a parallel between Karol Wojtyla’s acceptance of the Lord’s will and the Gospel accounts of Peter’s struggles to follow Jesus. Wojtyla’s “Yes” brought him to the Chair of Peter.

In the funeral homily, Cardinal Ratzinger noted passages in the Gospels that document similar “dialogues” between Jesus and Peter, who is warned that he will be martyred and that Jesus will leave him.

“By shepherding the flock of Christ, Peter enters into the Paschal mystery; he goes toward the cross and the Resurrection. The Lord says this in these words: ‘... When you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go (John 21:18),’” said the cardinal, just days before he would become the next Peter.

Toward the end of John Paul II’s pontificate, as Parkinson’s disease took hold of his body, he “increasingly entered into the communion of Christ’s sufferings; increasingly, he understood the truth of the words: ‘Someone else will fasten a belt around you,’” said Cardinal Ratzinger.

During his last Wednesday catechesis, Benedict reflected on his own “dialogue” with God. As Dominican Father Peter Cameron has noted elsewhere in these pages, Benedict “writes [and speaks] as a bona fide witness. And through a witness, by his ‘actions, words and way of being, Another makes himself present.” Jesus Christ stands before us, and Benedict testifies to the love of God that “passes all understanding,” the Incarnate Word who made himself a helpless infant for the salvation of the world, a Savior who chose a fisherman to be the fisher of men for him.

Benedict’s intimate dialogue with Jesus led the elderly scholar where he did “not want to go.” And during his final catechesis, the Pope acknowledged that he often “felt like St. Peter and the apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee. The Lord has given us so many days of sun and light wind, days in which the catch was abundant; there have also been moments in which the waters were agitated, and the wind blew contrary, as in all of the history of the Church, and the Lord appeared to be sleeping,” he said.

“But I have always known that in that boat there was the Lord, and I have always known that the barque of the Church is not mine; it is not ours; but it is his [Christ’s]. And he does not let it sink. It is him who steers it, certainly also through the men he has chosen, because he has wanted it this way.”

With the example of Christ’s steadfast love before him, Benedict vowed that he would never “abandon” the Church, but guard it through his chosen life of prayer and reflection. “I do not abandon the cross, but remain in a new way near to the crucified Lord. I no longer wield the power of the office for the government of the Church, but in the service of prayer, I remain, so to speak, within St. Peter’s bounds. St. Benedict, whose name I bear as Pope, shall be a great example in this for me. He showed us the way to a life which, active or passive, belongs wholly to the work of God.”

Our beloved Benedict’s eight years of service as St. Peter’s successor have demonstrated to all of us, in a most extraordinary way, a life that has been dedicated wholly to performing the work of God. And while we grieve profoundly over his departure, we are consoled that so great a friend of Christ will continue to intercede on our behalf with the Lord.

The legacy of his Emminence Benedict XVI Pope Emeritus is sealed. Due to no fault of his own, the Church is caught between a self destructive iconoclastic impulse of a weakened ecclesiology & a seemingly never ending storehouse of scandal to come. The psychic memory of Church needs to be cleansed. This means washing in the holy waters of pre-schismatic tradition. To paraphrase the Orthodox Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, who was an observer at the Second Vatican Council:The appearance of the icon in the Church is connected with the unveiling in the Church’s consciousness of the meaning of God-Manhood: the fullness of the Godhead which dwells is Christ corporeally.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council gave the Church its “icons” rooted in proper “cosmic” Christology. That won the day over the iconomachs.

Posted by Theresa H on Saturday, Mar, 2, 2013 11:55 AM (EST):

We have all seen something of the failing health of Pope Benedict XVI, Emeritus. I believe what he said, basically, that he saw clearly that the Church needs, at this point in time, a Vicar on Earth who can travel and keep up with all the spiritual, corporal, and corporeal challenges of the day in this new technological age. Humble man of God that he is, he saw the needs of the Church to be greater than his particular Petrine Ministry. We are comforted to KNOW that right here on earth he is praying and suffering with us and we with him for the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. We also can hope to read more writings from him in the form of at least a book or two. (I heard a few months ago that he had started another encyclical on Charity—and, in these past few weeks, that it will probably be published simply as a book.)

Posted by Lin on Friday, Mar, 1, 2013 9:45 PM (EST):

Pray for His Emminence Benedict XVI Pope Emeritus! He is a brilliant and HOLY man. Pray GOD sends us another holy traditionalist Pope! The Church is our rock, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow!

Posted by Irenic on Friday, Mar, 1, 2013 3:08 PM (EST):

The Lord, in His infinite wisdom has indeed divided that awful burden into “easy”, even “sweet” portions (Mt 11:30).

Posted by Jon Wood on Friday, Mar, 1, 2013 11:59 AM (EST):

We must pray each day for God’s will to be done according to His plan for our salvation in the selection of the leader of the free world, the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Who knows the mind of God? Perhaps it is time for the Eastern Church and the Western church to unite, and our next Pope will be given that cross to bear. Let us pray…..

Posted by Irenic on Friday, Mar, 1, 2013 10:43 AM (EST):

Surely the Mother of God understands the Church she gave birth to. There is great hope in that.

Posted by prasad on Thursday, Feb, 28, 2013 11:41 PM (EST):

These are truly difficult moments, I can only imagine the boldest decision in prayer that the Pope has made… it asks of us of greater faith, courage and firm anchoring in Christ, the chief Shepherd who ensures that His Bride, the Church ever shines in the world. Let us continue to join the Pope in prayer during these days in a special way.

Posted by Karl on Thursday, Feb, 28, 2013 9:38 PM (EST):

Pope Benedict seems so mysterious now! While he fascinated us with his German ancestry and his prodigious academic talent, that fades now with his monumental decision to lay down the honor of being the greatest Christian leader of this current moment. He could have laid low - staying in office while scaling back his activities to a manageable level of stress. But he has set perhaps a new precedent for popes to serve while they are fit, and then to resign to prevent a period of ineffectivity. God only knows! I know little of him, but have no doubt that Pope Benedict loves Jesus more than honor or anything else. May God bless him in his retirement and his successor in the papacy.

Posted by Michael Socarras on Thursday, Feb, 28, 2013 9:10 PM (EST):

How is it possible to find a vicar of Christ better able than Benedict XVI to face the challenges of our time, which he concluded far exceeded his own physical and mental strength? This is a frightening question in this time of Sede Vacante because our emptiness is a deliberate choice made by a very wise man who has told us plainly just how great are the current challenges to the life of faith. As we take down from our family room wall the beloved portrait of our former Holy Father, which has reminded us of our Catholic faith for more than seven years, the comforting reminder comes to mind that lamps are burning at all the tabernacles of the world as symbols of all the Church’s prayers at this moment. God will provide us a new servant of the servants of God who will be able to do what Benedict concluded he could no longer do himself.

Posted by Irenic on Thursday, Feb, 28, 2013 4:46 PM (EST):

I suspect that the Christian East, in particular the 15 Holy Patriarchs will not quite agree with Section 881 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church. May our ecclesiology nonetheless lead us into a perfect Trinitarian unity and may it reflect the Paschal reality of Our Lord and His Saints, especially His Most Holy Mother Mary.

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